“Government must defend itself; life and property must be protected, and law and order must be maintained; murder must be punished, and if the defendants are guilty of murder, either committed by their own hands or by some one else acting on their advice, then if they have had a fair trial, there should be in this case no executive interference”

Pretty much the words one would expect from a tycoon who spent $100,000 of his own money on the campaign that elected him Governor of Illinois; he would be another in the line of elected officials who had done and would do nothing for the remaining three inmates convicted in the Haymarket case (George Bernard Shaw on some of those officials: “If seven men must die for the Haymarket explosion, civilization can better afford to lose the seven members of the Illinois Supreme Court”)

But this official was John Peter Altgeld:

“no man has the right to allow his ambition to stand in the way of the performance of a simple act of justice” (something never even thought by Kennedy) and “If I decide they are innocent I will pardon them if I never hold office another day”

And so:

“The record of the trial shows that the jury in this case was not drawn in the manner juries usually are drawn” that bailiff Henry Ryce had been appointed as a special bailiff to summon prospective jurors, that Ryce had successfully impaneled “a prejudiced jury which he believed would hang the defendants”

and findings of fact:

“until the State proves from whose hand the bomb came, it is impossible to show any connection between the man who threw it and these defendants” and “It is further shown here that much of the evidence given at trial was a pure fabrication; that some of the prominent police officials in their zeal, not only terrorized ignorant men by throwing them into prison and threatening them with torture if they refused to swear to anything desired, but that they offered money and employment to those who would consent to do this”

And thus:

“I am convinced that it is clearly my duty to act in this case for the reasons already given, and I, therefore, grant an absolute pardon to Samuel Fieldin, Oscar Neebe, and Michael Schwab this 26th day of June,1893″

And then the attacks began, by those stern guardians of right and wrong, the press, all having little to do with the substance of the message:

“an alien himself” who “does not reason like an American, does not feel like one, &nb
sp; and consequently does not behave like one” who “has encouraged anarchy, rapine and the overthrow of civilizations”

And for those who think nastiness and name-calling are recent phenomena in politics, these statements from the re-election campaign in 1896, uttered by a future President (who will remain deservedly nameless in this poem), Altgeld was:

“one who would connive at wholesale murder” a man who “would substitute for the government of Washington and Lincoln a red welter of lawlessness and dishonesty as fantastic and vicious as the Paris Commune: (red-baiting never goes out of style, sadly)

And such attacks worked, as they usually do: Altgeld was defeated, his courage not rewarded in the short run, and in constant danger of being forgotten in the long run